to study. And you should consider multiple sets of guidelines for your text mining research project rather than a single set. If a review of literature from within your academic discipline does not provide clear ethical guidelines for text mining research or other forms of research using user-generated online data, you should consult literature from closely related fields.
Research involving the collection of data about people through social media and networking sites involves many of the same considerations as any other research with human participants, including determining appropriate informed consent processes, assuring that participation is voluntary whenever possible, protecting the privacy of individuals and the confidentiality of data collected, and minimizing risks to participants. Clearly, if you are working within a university you must consult with your IRB before collecting or analyzing any user-generated textual data.
Key Terms
Anonymize 33
Ethical guidelines 27
Informed consent 29
Institutional review board (IRB) 27
Intellectual property (IP) 37
Password-protected data 33
Plagiarism 40
Privacy 27
Prompted data 35
Public domain 32
Registration 33
Highlights
IRBs are university committees that approve, monitor, and review behavioral and biomedical research involving humans.
Consult AoIR and other professional research associations’ guidelines before collecting data that involves humans.
You must use all available evidence to determine whether data you are considering using should be considered to be in the public or private domain.
If data are in the public domain, you must determine whether users have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
In order to make determinations about users’ expectation of privacy, note whether the websites, apps, or other platforms you are using to collect data require member registration and whether they include privacy policies that specify users’ privacy expectations.
In your research papers, always use pseudonyms for users’ user names and full names.
Because the process of seeking informed consent is onerous and requires the creation and administration of an IRB-approved informed consent form, text mining researchers often prefer to use data that are clearly in the public domain.
Authorship and publishing present ethical challenges due to power dynamics within universities (see O’Leary, 2014, Chapter 4). In case you are concerned about authorship and publication of your own work or the work of a friend or colleague, you should consult the Davis–Madsen ethical scenarios and other web resources listed at the end of the chapter.
Review Questions
Under what circumstances can a social scientist gather data without gaining informed consent?
How can text mining research be used to benefit science and society?
How should data collected under unethical conditions be treated? Should it be used just like data collected under ethically rigorous conditions?
Discussion Questions
Closely read the privacy policies of three social media websites or apps. Is it reasonable to consider the comments and posts on these platforms to be in the public domain? Why or why not?
What impact will your research project have on the community from which participants are drawn?
How would you apply the concept of informed consent to your own research?
Web Resources
2012 AoIR report “Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research: Recommendations from the AoIR Ethics Working Committee” (http://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf)
The APA’s report “Psychological Research Online: Opportunities and Challenges” (www.apa.org/science/leadership/bsa/internet/internet-report.aspx)
The British Psychological Society’s “Ethics Guidelines for Internet-Mediated Research” (www.bps.org.uk/system/files/Public%20files/inf206-guidelines-for-internet-mediated-research.pdf)
The Ethicist Blog from the Academy of Management (http://ethicist.aom.org)
The Office of Research Integrity, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (http://ori.hhs.gov). This federal government website provides not only federal policies and regulations but also training resources on what is and how to handle research misconduct, case summaries involving research misconduct that make for sobering reading, and free tools for detecting plagiarism.
The Davis–Madsen ethics scenarios on the Ethicist Blog from the Academy of Management: “Ethics in Research Scenarios: What Would YOU Do?” (http://ethicist.aom.org/2013/02/ethics-in-research-scenarios-what-would-you-do)
Developing a Research Proposal
Consider the ethical dimensions of the research proposal or proposals you are developing. Does it make use of human subjects? Is the data in the public or private domain? And does your data contain information that can be used to identify individual research participants?
Further Reading
Israel, M. (2014). Research ethics and integrity for social scientists: Beyond regulatory compliance. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
O’Leary, Z. (2014). The essential guide to doing your research project. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
4 The Philosophy and Logic of Text Mining
Learning Objectives
The goals of Chapter 4 are to help you to do the following:
1 Define major philosophy of social science concepts that are relevant
